Hardware problems are quite difficult to tackle, worse if under Windows.
Here's one real experience I (Wayne)
had. There was once when installing a software, I accidentally inserted the
Audio hardware diskette. Thinking it was harmless, I went on, thinking I can
always "undo" everything again. How wrong was I. The next moment I
restarted Windows, I got the blue screen of death. Yeah, Windows is very nasty
when it comes to hardware.

Find The Culprit

Always calm down. Try to solve the problem yourself before resolving to
formatting or sending to your computer dealer. First, know what's happening and
the cause of it. In my case, the installation must have overwrite my old setting
and replaced the wrong file. There must be a reason why Windows is acting
improperly.

Logging Back On

First, try to log back on. If you can't log into Windows, don't panic.
Restart the computer. When the text "Starting Windows 98..." appears,
press F8. A menu will appear. Choose "Safe Mode" to continue. Safe
mode will take some time to load. When you are in Windows, go to Control
Panel, System. Click on the Device Manager tab. Find
the faulty hardware driver and delete it. Open autoexec.bat and
config.sys (both are hidden files in your root directory) with
notepad. If the hardware is a CD-ROM or sound card, it will probably write add
some lines. Check whether there are backup file (autoexec.bak, autoexec.b~k
e.g.) since most installation will back up the 2 important files. If there is,
simply replace them with the backup files. If there isn't, put "REM
" in front of every line that loads the hardware.

Find the faulty hardware
driver and zap it!

Repairing

When you restart, your computer is probably ok, since you have deleted all
instances of the hardware drivers. But the hardware isn't functioning.
re-install the hardware drivers, restart and you're done! If the problem
persists, your probably have a system conflict go to the next page for more.